Anesthesia Coding Alert

4 steps to clarifying muscle injections. If youre a PM coder wanting to perfect your trigger point injection (TPI) claims, use these questions to uncover the details of TPIs. 1. What Patients Needs TPIs? Most patients who require TPIs suffer from muscle or head pain. Trigger points are knots of muscle that form when muscles do not relax. Headaches are another reason that physicians perform TPI, explains Joanne Mehmert,CPC, CCS-P, owner of Joanne Mehmert & Associates in Kansas City. When your pain management specialist performs TPIs, the most common diagnosis reported is 729.1 (Myalgia and myositis, unspecified), says Judith Blaszczyk, RN, CPC, ACS-PM, president of Veritas Consulting in Greencastle, Pa. Watch out: Your physician might also use these synonyms for myalgia/myositis in the documentation:myofascitis, myofascial pain, or fibromyalgia. Code any of these diagnoses with 729.1, Mehmert recommends. Other diagnoses that might accompany a TPI claim include muscle spasm (728.85) or [...]